Necropolis

When Doctors Novatney and Lightfoot arrived at Lake of Two Peaks, Jim had already established a perimeter and base camp. Jim had thought it best for his men to take positions at the forest's edge, in the trees, and surrounding the site of the latest attacks.

Doctor Lightfoot had briefed Doctor Novatney on the true severity during the chopper ride in--all six had gone missing--Jim's men had found the other two heads shortly after the chopper had departed West Glacier and the Doctors were en route.

In the clearing surrounding the lake, Doctor Lightfoot stood in the wind-washed grass watching the chopper depart while Doctor Novatney squatted on her haunches, having walked over to the campsite immediately after exiting the chopper with her pack. She was examining the campsite, turning something over in her hands as the fires from the night before still smoldered near the shore of the lake in a rock-ringed fire pit. The towering mountain peaks in the distance reflected themselves off the blue-green lake's stillness--the only two witnesses to the events of the night before. Doctor Novatney finally stood up and looked toward her husband.

Martin ignored his wife.

Near the lake's surrounding forest, a tarp had been erected in a clearing which sheltered large wooden crates and green metal ammo cans. While men dressed in camouflage carried crates and cans to the forest's edge, others were digging foxholes, and a few were constructing a blind for the machine gun they'd set-up between two large ponderosa pines.

Martin made his way over to the flimsy erected tarp and dumped his pack near a tall stack of crates. His eyes searched the stacks for a large green metal field case labeled in small white stenciled letters, and read: DR. LIGHTFOOT. Sitting on his pack, and finding his case at the bottom of a taller stack of wooden crates, Martin slid down, sitting on the ground, using his pack as a back rest, and awaited the Rangers to remove whatever nonsense was stacked on top of his sensitive equipment.

Dr. Novatney, still examining the campsite, was now on her hands and knees, crawling around on the ground next to where one of the three two-man tents had been pitched the night before. This time she didn't bother looking at Martin when she stood up and she took a cursory look around the rock-ringed fire-pit at the center of camp. This time she just shook her head as Martin continued to ingore his wife and the fire still smoldered.

Kim took off her pack, resting it on the ground, and unzipped it. She reached inside and found the .45 caliber pistol and rig she'd packed shortly after Martin had called and told her about the latest attacks. The weapon was holstered in a rolled up leather shoulder rig, and attached to one of the broad leather straps, two loaded magazines bulged--each magazine contained within its own snapped green canvas pouch. Kim un-holstering her weapon and took the third loaded magazine she'd retrieved from her pack, and was now holding in her opposite hand, and slapped it into place. Kim chambered a round, checked the pistol was on "safe," and re-holstered her weapon. She put her pack back on and made her way toward Jim and Martin, where the two men now stood talking.

Jim interrupted Martin and pointed at Kim as she approached.

Martin looked up, and the men went silent. Martin smiled at her as she came closer.

Jim was studying his boots when she arrived. He took a moment, basking in the silence, then looked up and said, "Sorry to hear, but you're not supposed to be out here with that going on down there."

Kim shot Martin a look of anger and betrayal.

"Your husband told me, Doc," Jim said while he studied his boots again.

Martin started to say something but Kim held up her hand.

"It doesn't matter...I...we--" Kim finally said, trailing off.

No one said anything, each was now examining something different in their surroundings.

"Martin, we need to talk," Kim said, breaking the silence, and the couple began walking toward the trees near the campsite so they could talk in private.

"What the hell is that?" Kim said, stopping Martin, and pointed at the three tents and smoldering fire in the rock-ringed pit--pointing at the remnants from the night before. "Did you send them up here, Martin?"

"What the hell is that?" Martin said, changing the subject, and pointed at the large weapon adorning his wife's thin figure.

"Protection, Martin. I thought you had the Rangers stopping people from coming up here."

"I can't help it if they don't read the signs."

"You mean you and Jim?"

"What's that, honey?"

"You and Jim haven't listened to anything I've said--you two are the ones not reading the signs."

"Jim and I have been trying to contain them."

"I'm not too sure about you brining Jim and his guys in on this...they aren't researchers...what kind of Park Rangers are they, anyway? I mean they didn't even put-out the fire."

"Park Rangers? Kim, are you that naïve? Jim and his guys are Army Rangers."

"Army Rangers, Martin!" Kim's shout was merely a strong whisper.

"I had to...we have to contain them."

"Dammit Martin, it's not like these things are rouge grizzly bears or mountain lions. These things are human!" Kim's shout s were still whispers, "and they need to be treated as such. We can't have anyone coming up here! Period."

"Honey, we're just up here to study them...Jim and his guys are here to protect us, that's all"

"They only decapitate everyone that's ever come up here to stay the night you idiot! You know I'm only a forensic anthropologist, but from what I've unearthed up here, my opinion is that they are primates."

"You think too much, dear. You get your wheels turning-you've always taken the minutest detail to the extreme."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I've been studying these things for almost twenty years now, honey. I know what they are...they aren't primates." Martin changed the subject again, "I'm sorry I told Jim that we still aren't pregnant."

"Jeez, Martin, why the hell did you tell him that for anyway? That's one of those married things that we're supposed to keep between us."

"I'm sorry...he asked...I wasn't thinking."

"From now on, me getting pregnant is between you and I, okay?"

Martin didn't say anything.

"Some of my men found what you were looking for," Jim said, coming over to where Martin and Kim were talking in private. Jim gave Martin a secret look of disgust, then turned and left.

"You're students? Dammit, Martin! Please tell me didn't send them...up here?" Kim saw what Jim had handed Martin and recognizing the camcorder immediately--the one she'd seen Martin give his six students from the University of Montana only days earlier--the six grad students she'd seen in the West Glacier office a couple of days ago. The six people that were now missing.

"You don't understand, Kim, they said they wanted to help my research...I hired them at two-hundred bucks a day."

"Please Martin, tell me you didn't send them up here."

"They said they all knew of my work...said they knew all my tricks."

"All your tricks, I'm sure that they didn't--"

"I didn't mean--"

"What the hell are you doing sending your students up here! Dammit, Martin, you of all people should know how dangerous it is to come up here--especially at this time of year."

"I needed footage of them butchering their quarry--I have a big lecture down in Missoula next month."

"So you risk the lives of six of your students on the slim chance you might capture one on film?"

"They said they were up to the challenge...said they all came up to Park all the time...said they knew..." Martin trailed off.

Kim didn't respond at first. She merely shook her head, then said, "Did you ask them if they were up to the challenge of staying alive?"

"Yeah, well, that's the price of scientific research--they knew what they were dealing with."

"You sent them up here didn't you?"

"Not specifically...it was a mistake...I see that now. I admit I never told them about what goes on up here. But, after tonight, Jim and his men will take care of that."

"What do you and Jim have planed?"

"What's it look like we're going to do?"

"Dammit, Martin, don't treat me like I'm one of your stupid students!"

"We're not going to eradicate all of them--I'm going to try and capture at least one of them."

"What?"

"Look, you and I have a significant financial stake here. If we can and release one in a more populated park--can you imagine?"

"Can you imagine the carnage?"

"It'll be different honey, I swear."

"You think you're going to capture and train one--I got that part."

"People will finally believe me...I...we'll be world famous."

When the sun had finally descended behind the two towering peaks, the fire the Rangers had built to signal their quarry popped, ejecting large red-orange cinders into the cold wind, blowing the burning embers like dizzying fireflies in an upward spiral against the dark night air.

Kim was now struggling to keep her eyes open as she sat on the ground next to her pack, curling her legs against her chest as she sat next to the large fire. The fire's smoke was beginning to become too much for her to bear. "There's something I need to tell you Martin...something I've discovered since you told me to start digging up here."

Martin sat next to his wife, he too was sitting on the ground next to his pack near the fire. "I'm sure it can wait."

"No Martin, it can't wait because we're sitting on their burial ground."

"Impossible Kim, the Bigfoot don't bury their dead."

"Martin I have the--"

"The Bigfoot don't bury their dead! End of story! Please honey, don't start with this crack-pot theory again. I'm sure you're mistaken--I'm sure there's another explanation for what you think you've discovered."

"You sent me up here to dig. So, as your wife, and, as the leading forensic anthropologist at the University of Montana, I can tell you this: they'll be burying their dead here tonight--they do it every year near the autumnal equinox--they've been doing it this way for at least ten millennia." Kim noticed her breath had become brief wisps in front of her face.

"This is where they butcher their meat for their winter hibernation, not bury their dead."

"Butchering meat is only part of the ceremony."

"Kim, I'm the Bigfoot expert, not you."

"From what I've uncovered, the Bigfoot bury the elk and mountain goat quarters with their dead. It's a ceremony. I know what you've told me and what you think you've seen up here when you've observed them, but I'm telling you, the carbon dating tests I ran down at the lab in Missoula show some bone fragments to be over nine-thousand years old. These bones aren't elk or mountain goat or moose or any other animal bones either, Martin." Kim's chastisement of Martin had turned to intense whispers again, "I had one of my Ostenologist look at these bone fragments and he concluded that the ones that weren't animal were most similar to either Homo Erectus or Neanderthal."

"You're paranoid and mistaken and your bone guy is just plain wrong."

Kim stood up and adorned her thin figure with her pack. She began walking toward the main hiking trail that descended into Valley of the Meadows--a place where she knew the Bigfoot wouldn't be.

"Where are you going, honey?"

"Valley of the Meadows," Kim called out over her shoulder, walking toward the main trail.

"They don't go down that far, honey!" Martin yelled after his wife.

Flakes of snow are the first distinct image-whitish-greenish dots hung suspended against the dark green background--nothing but eerie silence.

Thundering sounds of machine gun fire break the silence.

Voices-men's voices--began calling out.

More automatic weapons fire--more silence--more voices calling out.

There is a frantic panning of the trees in night-vision green on greener on dark green.

Tracers streak across frame in bright white.

Automatic weapons fire echoes off the surrounding mountains while tracer rounds continue to sporadically streak across frame.

Voices are now calling out in a panic as the camera pans from one side of the forest to the other, then zooms in and out, desperately trying to capture something, anything in frame.

The M-60 machine gun erupts--and again--finally it falls silent.

"OOOO! THERE GOES HIS HEAD!" Martin snickers in almost boyish glee as a large swift, dark green object runs through the trees and decapitates a Ranger.

Kim found the camcorder a day later. She now live in seclusion in St. Mary on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park-long ago giving up her teaching career at the University of Montana in order to study Bigfoot fulltime. And armed with twenty odd years of Martin's research contained in notebooks and countless black micro-cassettes, she has now becoming the leading researcher in her field: Bigfoot.

The US Park Service, thinking Bigfoot the conjured lore of campfires, has reopened the area in Glacier National Park known as Lake of Two Peaks--despite Dr. Novatney's objections.

Released to the Public by Dr. Novatney only weeks after it had been found, the video Martin captured is, according to most experts, merely one of those ficticious oddities you find on the internet--where cabals chat randomly about the conspired realities in which we truly live--the mere esoteric fodder of lunitics thinking in the most surreptitious of terms.